Saturday, November 28, 2009

Cutting down on minims

Every time I teach about the history of the English Language I go over the confusion caused by minims in older scripts. Minims are those little vertical lines used to write <i>s, <n>s, <m>s, and <u>s, and occasionally other letters in combination with other strokes. To point out to my students just how troublesome <i>s, <n>s, <m>s and <u>s could be, I write <minimum> on the board. What makes it at all readable? The dots over the <i>s. It makes the counting of strokes easier.

But what if the minim count is off? Those little dots are still really helpful. I'm actually surprised I even noticed this sign.



I saw this on a Saturday morning near Cambridge Ohio about a month ago. I believe it was at a BP. If you have other examples of this phenomenon, I'd love to see them. It's a great way to save space and characters. And it can't be a mistake can it?

offered up by Wishydig at 06:41 Labels: , ,

2 comments:

  1. Boy with Lollipop28 November, 2009 09:36

    My mother's handwriting does that sometimes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mummy Addled17 December, 2009 07:11

    My flatmate has a Belinea computer monitor, I just noticed their logo does this the other day after reading your post. http://www.belinea.com/

    ReplyDelete

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